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I'm in South Korea. We don't have many trans people here, the mainstream feminist movement is anti-trans, and most of the mainstream Christian movements are ant

I'm in South Korea. We don't have many trans people here, the mainstream feminist movement is anti-trans, and most of the mainstream Christian movements are anti-LGBT. (My boss is Catholic.) Despite this, when we had a trans person visit my workplace ... absolutely nothing happened. They had lunch with us, nobody said anything about their gender, sexuality, or appearance, and they never mentioned it. Conversation was the same as for non-trans visitors. Now, I don't know if this is because the people in my workplace are especially tolerant, if they were afraid of confrontation, or if they lacked a lens through which to interpret the visitor, but something sounds really weird to me about your workplace. Are the people in your region so vocally political as a matter of course? Are you in the bible belt? What does it mean to acknowledge the existence of a trans person?

bradlys 5y ago
From what I understand about SEA countries, they tend to not be rude upfront but will definitely discriminate later. America is different. We do both.
plorg 5y ago
I work for a company run by evangelical Christians, and this extends to probably 80% of the company. Certainly the only people taking about religion are the evangelicals. Management attends explicitly Christian "leadership retreats". Among other things, I would not be comfortable attending these events. Officially discussion of religion and and politics is discouraged. In practice that means the conservative culture warriors are vocal about whatever issue they're worked up about. For the trans people I know, "acknowledge the existence of" them basically means to treat them according to their self-understanding as communicated to you. Usually that means using the name and pronouns that they identify with and not asking invasive questions. The idea is, roughly, that you are acknowledging that they - the person in front of you, a real physical body presented according to their self-understanding - exist. Dead naming or using a gender assigned at birth would imply that you are making their identity subject to your own model of the world, they're an abstract notion to you. Or, worse, that you are addressing a person that doesn't, in their conception, exist. It's imprecise language, perhaps, and not every person experiences it the same way.
- alentist 5y ago
  Your second paragraph is a word salad and non-sequitur. Treating a human who claims they're a deer as a human isn't denying their existence.
  - plorg 5y ago
    No one in this thread is asking anybody to do that. I was responding to a question that was asked of me.
    - alentist 5y ago
      Treating a man who claims they're a woman as a man isn't denying their existence.

bradlys 5y ago

From what I understand about SEA countries, they tend to not be rude upfront but will definitely discriminate later. America is different. We do both.

plorg 5y ago

I work for a company run by evangelical Christians, and this extends to probably 80% of the company. Certainly the only people taking about religion are the evangelicals. Management attends explicitly Christian "leadership retreats". Among other things, I would not be comfortable attending these events. Officially discussion of religion and and politics is discouraged. In practice that means the conservative culture warriors are vocal about whatever issue they're worked up about. For the trans people I know, "acknowledge the existence of" them basically means to treat them according to their self-understanding as communicated to you. Usually that means using the name and pronouns that they identify with and not asking invasive questions. The idea is, roughly, that you are acknowledging that they - the person in front of you, a real physical body presented according to their self-understanding - exist. Dead naming or using a gender assigned at birth would imply that you are making their identity subject to your own model of the world, they're an abstract notion to you. Or, worse, that you are addressing a person that doesn't, in their conception, exist. It's imprecise language, perhaps, and not every person experiences it the same way.

alentist 5y ago
Your second paragraph is a word salad and non-sequitur. Treating a human who claims they're a deer as a human isn't denying their existence.
- plorg 5y ago
  No one in this thread is asking anybody to do that. I was responding to a question that was asked of me.
  - alentist 5y ago
    Treating a man who claims they're a woman as a man isn't denying their existence.